I just want to re-iterate for managers to make sure you list Qualifiers in the draws just as Qualifier.

In the rules, there is a protocol for making clear which Qualifier is picked in people's draws when qualifiers meet. Ie Qualifier 1 is the player in the top position and Qualifier 2 is in the bottom position. That way no matter where they may meet in a players draw, it is easy to show which qualifier you want to go to the next round.

Do not use numbers for the Qualifiers. If managers start getting back into this habit, it will eventually cause the problems we had 2 years ago. It is good practice to be consistent across the board so no one has problems down the track.

The problem only happens when the second qualifier meets the third qualifier in the draw. If you write numbers you are contradicting the rules. If you write Q2 vs Q3 and the rules state you write Q1 or Q2. A player then only has to write Q2, and they can receive the points for that match no matter who wins. In the draw the first player is listed as Q2, but in the rules, the second player is listed as Q2.

In the Memphis draw, Verdasco was initially drawn to play a qualifier in the first round. After Verdasco withdrew, his place in the draw was taken by [Q]Bogomolov Jr., and [LL]Russell took the initial qualifier's place.

2 people in FITD Memphis picked "Qualifier" for this match. Do you agree that this should count as a pick for Russell, since he took the initial qualifier's place in the draw? Note that both of them appear to have been unaware that Verdasco had withdrawn at the time they submitted their picks (which would mean that their "Qualifier" pick should count for a pick for whoever took the initial qualifier's place in the draw, i.e. Russell).

You were right about placing Russell as the pick for "qualifier" in that situation.
All picks in FITD are made on the Position of the players in the draw (ie 1 to 32 / 64 / 128 ). So... If the player in position 8 in the draw is replaced by another player through withdrawal or promotion (ie. now a Q, LL or a new seed), that new player in position 8 is the pick for everyone who picked position 8 to win in round 1 and subsequent rounds.

This happened to someone 2 or 3 weeks ago with Berdych withdrawing (#1 seed). 2 players within the draw were moved to cover the seeds (5 to 1 seed, and 9 to 5 seed) and a LL was placed in the spot of the player who was moved to become #9 seed.

I go through the spreadsheet and change the colour of the FITD players who did not update their draws between the time of withdrawal and the start of play. This helps to make sure I dont make mistakes by changing the wrong draws if it gets a little tricky. Then its a matter of looking at the rows where changes to the draw were made and making the adjustments only to those FITD players draws I've highlighted.

(It should stand in the first post. But sometimes it's there and sometimes it isn't... Very strange )

Ah no worries! Thanks. I didnt see his post and thought Dubai needed a manager. I can't do either of the Masters tourney's so I will manage a few after these. I need to download the spreadsheet i created as I broke my laptop that I had created it on.

Chris, I noticed you were having trouble using it. If anyone has any suggestions on making it more user friendly, please let me know and I can try and make adjustments. I don't know if the instructions on the intro page are difficult to follow as I probably have a blind eye to it. If things don't make sense let me know so I can change it.

Thanks for the confirmation and tips The tricky thing about that situation was that the position of the qualifier had changed, so one has to determine whether they knew if the draw had changed or not, which may not be so obvious sometimes! I can't imagine this happening very often though.

Regarding the spreadsheet, I'm not sure if this is a well known problem among current managers regarding removing spaces - I found that the suggested method of removing spaces (ctrl+F a space and replace with nothing) didn't do the trick for me (and resulted in an incorrect update which I hastily removed ). It turned out that the spaces were actually "non-breaking" spaces; to remove these you have to enter ALT+0160 (using numpad) into the find bar instead of just a normal space. Might be good to know if anyone is having trouble getting rid of spaces.

Overall though your spreadsheet is great and I'll be using it in the future.

And I vote the sanction should be to kiss my ass. Just because something important comes up in my life and you guys can't handle not having daily updates you decide to just run Buenos Aires without even a PM?